Week 10, Extra: Just A Snippet

After a week spent mostly indoors and inactive, I sprang(ish) into action(ish) yesterday. Both my regular readers will, I’m sure, be bristling with excitement. By now, optimistically, firing on a quarter of a cylinder, I called in at Dellfield and at Bovingdon Brickworks. The life and times of tiny black specs encased in balls of jelly are irresistible (it’s got to be decades since I followed the progress of common frog spawn). However, before that, I stopped off at Dellfield and was lucky to enjoy 3 Red Kites soaring through the skies, over the Oak. One even landed in the neighbouring Scots Pine.  Two of the Kites were an obvious pair, staying close (one following the other), mirroring one another’s movements and displaying to one another. Unfortunately, I was in the wrong place to capture the action properly (shooting into the sun) but caught their silhouette’s over the Oak (below, right. I applied a blue gradient filter to enhance the image - it was either that or black birds against white sky). Having hurried back up the hill, I did manage a somewhat distant shot of one of the birds (below, left).

Courting Red Kites 

Red Kite (Milvus milvus)

Red Kite (Milvus milvus)

Developing Frog Spawn 

The frog spawn at Bovingdon is coming along nicely. Different clumps are at different stages of development. One section is now probably more than 5 weeks old, with the new tadpoles wriggling around in a large mass on top of the jelly. I am not entirely sure whether the tadpoles in the photograph below are Common Toad or Common Frog. I suspect the former but will hopefully confirm if/when I know.